Elizabeth Bebe Moore Campbell Gordon
(February 18, 1950 ' November 27, 2006) is the author of the New
York Times bestseller BROTHERS AND SISTERS as well as YOUR BLUES AIN'T LIKE MINE, for
which she won an NAACP Image Award for literature. She is a commentator for National
Public Radio and a contributing editor for Essence magazine, and her articles have
appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, USA
Today Weekend, Black Enterprises, Ebony, and numerous other publications.

Campbell was born and raised in
Philadelphia and graduated from the University of Pittsburgh, where she earned a bachelor
of science degree in elementary education. She taught elementary and middle school for
five years. She lived in Los Angeles with her husband, Ellis Gordon Jr. They have a
daughter, the actress Maia Campbell, and a son, Ellis Gordon III. Read the transcript of Ms. Campbell's online chat from
BarnesandNoble.com dated Thursday, February 19, 1998 9pm

A little girl learns coping skills with the help of her grandmother,
neighbors and school friends, when her mother's mental illness disrupts her
daily routine.

Some mornings, Annie's mother's smiles are as bright as sunshine as she makes
pancakes for breakfast and helps Annie get ready for school.

But other days, her mother doesn't smile at all and gets very angry. Those days
Annie has to be a big girl and make her own breakfast, and even put herself to
bed at night. But Annie's grandma helps her remember what to do when her mommy
isn't well, and her silly friends are there to cheer her up. And no matter what,
Annie knows that even when Mommy is angry on the outside, on the inside she
never stops loving her.

In this novel of family and redemption, a mother struggles to save her
eighteen-year-old daughter from the devastating consequences of mental
illness by forcing her to deal with her bipolar disorder. New York Times
best-selling author Bebe Moore Campbell draws on her own powerful emotions
and African-American roots, showcasing her best writing yet.

Trina suffers from bipolar disorder, making her paranoid, wild, and
violent. Watching her child turn into a bizarre stranger, Keri searches for
assistance through normal channels. She quickly learns that a seventy-two
hour hold is the only help you can get when an adult child starts to spiral
out of control. After three days, Trina can sign herself out of any program.

Fed up with the bureaucracy of the mental health community and determined
to save her daughter by any means necessary, Keri signs on for an illegal
intervention. The Program is a group of radicals who eschew the psychiatric
system and model themselves after the Underground Railroad. When Keri puts
her daughter's fate in their hands, she begins a journey that has her
calling on the spirit of Harriet Tubman for courage. In the upheaval that
follows, she is forced to confront a past that refuses to stay buried, even
as she battles to secure a future for her child.

Bebe Moore Campbell's moving story is for anyone who has ever faced
insurmountable obstacles and prayed for a happy ending, only to discover
she'd have to reach deep within herself to fight for it.

An eagerly awaited new novel by the author of Your Blues Ain't Like Mine. Campbell's
new novel is set in the white-hot center of racially troubled Los Angeles, where African
American Esther Jackson has a promising career at a downtown bank. When a new black male
vice president's behavior draws a sexual harassment suit, Esther is forced to examine her
own loyalties.

What You Owe Me is a stunning account of the changes we have seen in
white attitudes toward blacks, but it is also a sensitive look at what
betrayal'of friendship, of love'does to us all.

Los Angeles, l945:
When Hosanna Clark, newly arrived from the farm fields of Texas, befriends
Holocaust survivor Gilda Rosenstein, she opens the door to a new life for
them both. Using Gilda's knowledge of cosmetics and Hosanna's energy and
determination, they begin producing a line of lipsticks and lotions for
black women. The two are more than partners: They are dear friends.

Then
Gilda suddenly disappears, taking all the assets. Hosanna is doubly
betrayed: financially ruined and emotionally bereft. When, years later, she
passes away, her small cosmetics company dies with her. But Hosanna leaves
behind a daughter steeped in her mother's pain: Matriece is as smart and
driven as her mother and savvy enough to recognize that white firms are
competing not only for black consumer dollars but for black professional
talent as well. When Gilda's huge cosmetics conglomerate hires her to launch
a line of black beauty products, Matriece takes on a mission to collect her
mother's debt.

What You Owe Me is a stunning account of the changes we
have seen in white attitudes toward blacks, but it is also a sensitive look
at what betrayal-of friendship, of love-does to us all. Ultimately, it is a
moving book about healing. As Emerge magazine acknowledged, "Campbell's
writings are a beacon of light, helping assuage the anger by tending our
deepest wounds."

Set in the recent American past, this is a timeless tale of racism, murder, and
redemption. A black Chicago-born teen goes Deep South for the summer and is murdered for
saying the wrong thing to a white woman. Repercussions are felt by everyone involved, both
black and white, for generations.

Repercussions are felt for decades in a dozen lives after a racist
beating turns to cold-blooded murder in a small Mississippi town in the
1950s. Bebe Moore Campbell's affecting memoir, Sweet Summer: Growing Up
With and Without My Dad, was hailed by The Philadelphia Inquirer as "a
remarkable achievement." "Ripe with family stories, lush with images,
suffused with emotions," said the Kansas City Star. "It is probably one of
the more overdue books about and for the black community," wrote
Nikki Giovanni in The
Washington Post. Now Campbell turns her abundant talents to fiction in an
evocative first novel, Your Blues Ain't Like Mine. Chicago-born Armstrong
Todd is fifteen, black, and unused to the segregated ways of the Deep South
when his mother sends him to spend the summer with relatives in her native
rural Mississippi. For speaking a few innocuous words in French to a white
woman, Armstrong pays the ultimate price when her husband, brother-in-law,
and father-in-law decide to teach him a lesson. The lives of everyone
involved in the incident - black and white - are changed forever, and the
reverberations extend well into the next generation. Resonant with the
sorrows of poverty and racial prejudice as well as the triumphs of love and
social justice, Your Blues Ain't Like Mine marks the debut of a powerful,
clear voice in contemporary fiction.

Maxine McCoy's life is going pretty well. She is the executive producer
of a hugely popular talk show, married to the man she loves, and pregnant
with their child. Although there are some issues in her life that she must
deal with -- her husband's past infidelity, the high pressures that come
with being a television producer -- she has done rather well for herself.

Living atop a Los Angeles hill in a lavish home, Maxine feels good about
what she has accomplished, especially considering the limited circumstances
and opportunity she was given in the struggling Philadelphia community where
she was raised. But her security is shattered and everything changes when
Maxine gets a call from the caretaker of her 76-year-old grandmother, who
raised the orphaned Maxine. She is summoned back to the old neighborhood
that she would rather forget.

Maxine returns to Philadelphia and discovers that her old neighborhood,
like her grandmother, has seen better days. Once a brilliant singing star,
Maxine's grandmother, Lindy, has become a smoking, drinking, bitter woman
whose once glorious voice has withered from disuse. The house that at one
time echoed with music and laughter is now quiet and lifeless. The community
in which Maxine grew up has become a crime-infested neighborhood that keeps
its residents in a state of fear and despair.

Maxine is all set to move her grandmother away from the decimation around
her, but Liddy isn't quite ready to leave, and fights for her independence.
When an opportunity arises for Liddy to sing once again, both she and Maxine
realize that Lindy and the old neighborhood are worthy of restoration.

Writing with lyrical prose and insight, Bebe Moore Campbell demonstrates
why Entertainment Weekly called her "a master when it comes to
telling a story." She has written a tale of hope and redemption that shows
how, with the right attitude, anything is possible.

Sweet
Summer : Growing up with and without My DadClick to order via Amazon

Bebe Moore grew up in a divided world'between her mother's house in
Philadelphia and the "sweet summers" spent South with a disabled father.
Sweet Summer is her acclaimed account of those years, a story of finding her
father in a fractured family. "A wonderful book!"-Bill Cosby.